Poems

Paper blowing from its iron stomach A yak from Tibet bellows to a stone eagle. Macintosh faces watch gaudy bears jerk Round an insane chiming clock. Two lesbian lionesses make it In a red plastic bucket to impress The moth-eaten buffalo cowering behind One inch thick american steel railings. Black pickaxe men, uneven as glacial rocks Stare and stare against the cold. A weather vane monster Sneers at the crack-ice lake. Yellow and red pointed skaters Slide to the barbed wire sanctuary. An old brown hat paces Hexagonal pathways to the mad mad music. Threequarters the flag on a horned lamp post An abortion sticker in a concrete house.

Upon the orange sands of mars Beneath a scarlet sky The crystals sit and contemplate The universal why. Travel in their saucer ships Across the universe But everywhere is much the same Except on earth it's worse.

Times get so hard When the clock in your cardboard box Won't start. Firemen help When the key to your high diving bell Won't melt And wouldn't you grin If your mother walked in.

In a landscape flinted with crude invention My heart clambers from a stretch of foul water Growls mythos. Worries logos. Shivers rough. Come here boy - bark. Good dog, good dog. Loud snaps a crow stick dividing orchard mist Faith is old fruitfulness to be partialy reset. Outlines meander, summer whistles to autumn, A Gomeran shepherd, a man of salt and echo.

Don't Hear Of Much (for Ian Wallace) Yo Ian Bro, Rafting your roll chosen maple sticks Rattled from pollarded starlight Copses & Robberies. Pea soup crash, Zrrup down splash, dubadub scritch. Re tankards of woe - stop All aboard the train for go - stop Definite point torch when possible - stop (Though true hear dramatically less here) - stop Finger aired. Hindu umpire,"Who is being this Canute?" - stop "Timing is behind all feeling, love. I played the Empire" - stop Haskell CD pass 2 spot. Harry strumming later in time - stop Hey Bro. Low-hatted, dreaming lamb in Nashville bracket, with garlic, smile, part-sorted, WLTM Kodak moment with romaine- please tick ear. Written listening as John Adams agrees, "There is some humour in the piece." (His Violin Concerto) Vroom, dissolve, appear, stumble, roar, slide, ping. (insert one size pin tale on donkey verbs of choice - He does!) Eugene. Oil that Gate, Eugene! New springs recondition old hearts Don't hear of much do that.

As now the barque ploughs chuffing round the byte, I wish you ballets of Lantern smoke, a glowing range, tranquility - & a bright green, satin bow, mysteriously fallen from a kite's tail, to snafu your heart with cinnamon.

now playing: I Believe In Father Christmas - from The Swingle Singers CD The Story of Christmas © Peter Sinfield 2002

You are the birth of the midnight sky You are the sad azure tears of a Mighty ocean breaking on the rocks of time. You are what you will and what I will you are. My eyes are your creator.

You are the earth's beloved birth. You are the feathered rainbow bird Whose winged words are ever spread. You will what you are and I am what you will. My love is a red painting. *This poem written by Stephanie Ruben in answer to the first.

The hooker Neon sign on her eyelids Flashing out To let To let To let.

Topper Tackett did not lack it Neither did his sister But he did it far too much And now he's got a blister.

If your stumbling about with your head on a stick if you bite at the world when you just need to lick if your overglazed ears are about to implode from the grating of gears for the next episode. if the trumpeting mouths and the fingernail screams of this tubular screams of this tubular world squeeze your cheeks till it seems that you can't feel the sides of your life through the glare while the taste of your days is too acid to bear...... Alka-Seltzer doesn't help much.

I took three strings I took three weights The weights were labelled Yes, no and why I tied yes to one string I tied no to the other To the third I tied why. I joined the strings. Holding why, I swung yes and no around my head Suddenly I hurled them towards a tree. The weights wrapped about the tree. It began to rain.